Bauhaus, Le Corbusier, and the International Style

Bauhaus: Synthesis of Art and Craft

In 1919, Walter Gropius founded a school in Weimar with a radical program: “The ultimate goal of all creative activity is building.” Architecture, painting, sculpture, design, typography, theater—all were to be integrated into a single practice aimed at creating a well-designed world.

The Bauhaus existed from 1919 to 1933 (closed by the Nazis). In 14 years, it graduated several hundred students and created a visual language that still defines graphic design, furniture design, and architecture.

The principles of Bauhaus. First—learning by doing: students learned not in theory but by producing real objects. Second—the synthesis of art and craft: there is no “pure” art—sooner or later, all art incarnates into an object that serves a function. Third—industrial production as the norm: objects are designed for mass production, not for handwork.

Teachers: Kandinsky, Klee, Mies van der Rohe. Bauhaus products—the Marcel Breuer chair, Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s table lamp, Josef Hartwig’s chess set—are still being produced and sold.

Le Corbusier: “A Machine for Living”

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier (1887–1965), was the most influential and controversial architect of the twentieth century. His ideas shaped the form of cities worldwide. “The Five Points of New Architecture” (1927): 1. Free plan (pilotis—buildings on columns); 2. Free façade (structural frame allows windows to be positioned freely); 3. Ribbon windows; 4. Flat roof-terrace; 5. Free plan (partitions are laid out freely).

Villa Savoye (1928–1931, Poissy) is the “standard” realization of the five points. A white cube on thin columns, ribbon windows, flat roof-terrace. This is a manifest in concrete: “a house is a machine for living.”

The International Style and its Limits

The “International Style” is the global variant of functionalism. Glass towers, white flat surfaces, rejection of ornament, rejection of local traditions. Identical worldwide.

The problem is psychological. A person lives not only in “functions”—they need symbols, landmarks, a connection with place. Mass housing districts around the world (Paris banlieues, British tower blocks, Soviet panel housing) created social isolation, crime, depression. Functional architecture did not account for human psychology.

Robert Venturi in “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” (1966) directly polemicized with Mies van der Rohe. “Less is a bore”—the answer to Mies’s “Less is more.” Postmodernism brought back historical quotation, irony, local context, and ornament.

Mies van der Rohe: Details and Perfection

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) is an architect whose phrase “God is in the details” became a design mantra. The Seagram Building (1958, New York) is the most influential office building of the twentieth century. Thirty-eight floors; a bronze steel frame; glass façade. The building is set back from the street line—creating a public plaza. This solution was later coded into zoning by New York’s city government: developers were granted extra floors in exchange for public space. This changed the Manhattan skyline.

The design of the iPhone is a direct descendant of Mies. An iPhone with no extra buttons, a MacBook with no visible ventilation holes—this is “God is in the details” in action. The “less is more” principle works equally in architecture and product design.

Question for reflection: Le Corbusier designed a "machine for living"—optimized housing that turned out to be socially destructive. In your practice: where have you optimized one parameter but missed others? How do you now approach multiparametric tasks?